1/2: When changing email providers, I've never understood why some people feel the need to export many GB worth of emails from their old account, and then import them all into the new account.

For myself, I would copy over the last one month's worth of emails over, and then archive the rest locally. That practice has always served me well. If I have a need to find an older email, it's a simple matter to search my local email archive.

Continued on 2/2 . . .

#email

2/2: Also, if the new email provider does not prove to be satisfactory enough for my needs, it's no big deal to use another provider.

For some people that import/export ALL their emails, that can be susceptible to errors/failures during transfer. If they then decide that the new provider was not satisfactory, all that importing/exporting was all for nought.

What do you do?
#email

@EMDiscussions

As I've tried different email providers, and repeatedly returned to Fastmail, I've fallen into the trap of exporting and importing past emails. Now I have duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates of many, many emails.

I wish I'd been smarter or thought it through beforehand.

Fortunately I'm nowhere near any mailbox/account size limit (despite over 20 years of accumulated emails), so not losing sleep over it.